Sundance Channel

Toby Wong retrospective

Bradford Shellhammer — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:06:40 +0000

Portrait made from dice by Frederick McSwain

Toby Wong was a Canadian designer I once interviewed for FULL FRONTAL FASHION. He was a product designer and a subversive artist. His designs weren't for everyone. He made gold coke spoons cast from McDonald's coffee stirrers and diamond rings, inverted, so the diamond point was on the outside. That design was called "Killer Ring" obviously. This New York Times slideshow is a great reference of his work. It is Design Week in NYC this week and a retrospective called Brokenoff Brokenoff, in Toby's honor, will run May 14-17. It's a celebration of Toby's work including many close friends' contributions.

Taschen’s Neo Rauch retrospective

Perrin Drumm — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:11:20 +0000

Neo Rauch's work is at once familiar and slightly off, though slightly off shouldn't be confused with off-putting; His paintings are huge and bright and difficult to tear your eyes away from. Calling his compositions surreal only barely describes them, and besides, Rauch isn't too fond of the word. The colors he uses and the imagery are reminiscent of old storybooks. People are dressed in all manner of clothing, from Paul Bunyan to the Revolutionary War-era, think lots of men in waistcoats and britches. His landscapes owe a lot to Dali's desolate, almost post-apocalyptic fantasy worlds, and his proportions are all over the place. Men and women of various sizes operate together on the same plane without clear distinction as to fore or background.

John Baldessari at LACMA

Perrin Drumm — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:15:56 +0000

John Baldessari’s work can be seen as a steady progression, starting simply and building upwards. His first works, which he produced in the late 60s, were cocky, tongue-in-cheek, text-based conceptual pieces in the style of Lawrence Weiner, but with less poetry and graphic flair. These pieces relied heavily on funny, ironic phrases like his first [...]

Everything Tim Burton

Perrin Drumm — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:45:05 +0000

Tim Burton fans came out in droves to the opening of his retrospective yesterday at MoMA. Dressed in red and black stripes and lace and crazy hats - even painted on stitches - they were hard to miss. And with the massive collection of drawings, set pieces and video I doubt they left disappointed. To get to the actual exhibit you have to walk through the mouth of one of Burton's classic freak show creations, down a hallway lit only by TV screens playing his animated series "The World of Stainboy." At the end of the hallway is a dark room lit by black-lights where some of his glow-in-the-dark pieces are on display.

Alice wonders Burton and Leibovitz

Sundance Channel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:01:23 +0000

As artists continue to draw inspiration from childhood fears and fairy tales, it comes as no surprise that classic stories like Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland) are being tapped. Coming up on the 2010 film lineup is Tim Burton's much anticipated ALICE IN WONDERLAND with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter (who else?), Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. But Burton is hardly the first to put a unique spin on Carroll's tale. With the first official photographs of WONDERLAND released last week, photographer-extraordinaire Annie Leibovitz's editorial for Vogue US December 2003 have "resurfaced," thanks to the efforts of bloggers everywhere.